Tag: Medical Research

Stephen Hawking condemns animal rights movement

British physicist Stephen Hawking
recently denounced animal rights extremists bent on banning the use of
animals in medical experimentation. Hawking author of the best selling
A Brief History of Time, attacked the animal rights movement in
comments before a meeting of the British Association of Science.

Andrew Blake, director of the UK-based
group Seriously Ill for Medical Research, also appeared before the gathering
of scientists to denounce animal rights extremists, saying, “Medical
progress is being threatened by the extreme tactics of those who are seeking
to abolish animal research.”

Both men’s comments were occasioned
by the recent controversy over protests by UK activists against an animal
breeding farm in Oxfordshire. The establishment, |Hill Grove| farm, breeds
cats specifically to be used for animal experiments. The cats are certified
to be free of common feline viruses that might disrupt or distort medical
research. British Association of Science president Colin Blakemore, for
example, studies the cats to find clues to the development of the cerebral
cortex. Blakemore is currently developing a new imaging system for analyzing
the brain that he hopes will later be modified for use in human beings,
possibly greatly enhancing our understanding of how the brain works.

For his efforts, animal rights
activists have rewarded Blakemore with two letter bombs, packages containing
razor blades, and assorted threats over the last 11 years. Activists have
engaged in an unrelenting campaign of harassment against Hill Grove involving
everything from car bombs to rock throwing that has destroyed 80 percent
of the glass panes in the house where |Hill Grove|’s proprietors live.

Sources:

UK’s Hawking condemns animal rights extremists. Patricia Reaney, Reuters,
Sept. 7, 1998.

Hawking defends tests on animals. Daily Telegraph,
Sept. 13, 1998.

Animal Rights Protests Planned for August 22nd

On August 22nd animal
rights activists around the nation will gather at primate research centers
to protest and call for an end to medical research involving primates.
The level of information being distributed by animal rights activists
is amazing. One email on an animal rights news I saw suggested protesting
at a specific primate research institute and listed a specific researcher
who was doing research on alcohol tolerance in primates. When I contacted
the research lab, however, the director informed me the animal rights
activists might be disappointed — the primates this particular researcher
is using for experimental subjects happen to be homo sapiens.

If any animal rights activists
turn up at primate research centers in your area, a nice letter to the
editor about the importance of such research would be a nice gesture to
support these brave researchers threatened by animal rights ignorance.

Source:

Why be in Seattle on August 22nd? Coalition to End Primate Experimentation, Press Release, August 1998.

Transplanting animal cells into human beings produces benefits today

Keeping with the Xenotransplantation theme, there have been a number of stories recently about real world applications
for transplanting animal cells into human beings as well as transplanting
genetically altered human cells into human beings.

  • In late May, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new
    skin graft product called Apligraf intended to be used initially in
    the treatment of venous skin ulcers. Apligraf is composed of human skin
    cells combined with collagen cells taken from cattle. The human cells
    come from the foreskins of newly circumcised infants.

    Venous skin ulcers affect thousands
    of Americans each year and require multiple surgeries to correct. Apligraf
    will speed the healing and recovery time after surgery. The product
    is currently undergoing clinical trials to discern its effectiveness
    in treating burns, diabetic ulcers and eventually bed sores.

  • At the end of July, Imutran, one of the leading companies doing xenotransplantation
    work, announced it would begin using pig livers to act as dialysis machines
    for human beings.

    “What we are thinking of doing
    is using the liver as a temporary support, outside the body, as a sort
    of dialysis machine for patients in liver failure to allow the doctors
    to buy time until a human organ becomes available for transplantation,”
    Dr. Corrine Savill, Imutran’s CEO, told BBC radio.

    About 50,000 people in Europe alone
    are waiting for transplants, with that number growing at 15 percent
    a year according to a Reuters News Service report.

  • In May a 20-year-old college student had a historic operation after
    his heart was removed from his body and fixed using animal tissue.

    Guy Altmann, a Texas A&M student,
    had a malignant tumor the size of a lemon lodged in his mitral valve.
    During the six-hour operation, his heart was stopped, removed and the
    tumor cut away. The mitral valve was rebuilt using heart tissue from
    a cow.

    “I feel a lot better than
    when I cam in,” Altmann told the Associated Press.

  • And what about the fear expressed by animal rights activists that
    xenotransplantation could lead to some outbreak of a previously unknown
    disease? An August report in the New Scientist magazine suggests
    that there have been no signs of transmission of such diseases in patients
    who have received cells from pigs for pancreatic disorders and Parkinson’s
    disease.

    “The findings, based on screening
    samples from patients exposed to pig tissue, provide the first compelling
    evidence that dormant pig viruses do not spread to humans, causing new
    and incurable diseases,” the magazine reported.

    More research will need to be done,
    of course, but so far the worst fears of those opposed to xenotransplantation
    and genetic engineering are proving unfounded.

Sources:

Drug that helps heal skin wounds wins FDA approval. Reuters News Service, May 26, 1998.

Company plans to use pig livers as human dialysis machines. Patricia Reaney, Reuters News Service, July 30, 1998.

Man has rare surgery: his heart is removed, fixed with animal tissue, put back in his chest. Mark Babineck, Associated Press, May 22, 1998.

Transfer of animal cells to humans shows promise. Reuters News Service, August 5, 1998.

Scientists need to better educate the public

Dr. Leroy E. Hood, a genetics researcher
at the University of Washington at Seattle, told a gathering of genetics
researchers that they need to spend more of their time educating the public
on the benefits and ethical challenges of science.

Hood told the researchers gathered
for the Short Course on Experimental and Mammalian Genetics that the coming
years will bring major advances that could potentially revolutionize medical
treatment. At the same time change is coming at such a breakneck pace
that the public is falling further behind and is occasionally caught up in
distorted images about genetics research.

“Scientists say they’re
too busy with their own research and teaching,” Hood told the researchers,
“Well, everyone is busy. It’s a matter of priorities. A scientifically
literate public is important to many areas of research, including getting
it funded.”

Hood’s comments couldn’t
come a moment too soon. Already movements on either side of the Atlantic
are gearing up to protest and perhaps outlaw much of the results of genetic
engineering altogether. Greenpeace and others lead protests against genetically
altered plants while animal rights groups protest and occasionally destroy
research into promising areas of Xenotransplantation (transplanting animal
cells into human beings). If scientists don’t wake up and meet these
challenges head on, the issue might not be whether or not they can get
funded but whether or not they can legally continue to do their important
work.

Source:

Scientists urged to help public understand science. Michael Woods, Toledo Blade, July 30, 1998.

ALF sets woodchucks free

Animal Liberation Front activists
claimed to have broken in to a Marmotech, Inc. testing laboratory in New
York and released 150 woodchucks. Bud Tennant, who runs the laboratory,
said the number was closer to 30 — most of the animals remained in or
around the facility.

The woodchucks were being used
for research into a possible vaccine for |hepatitis B|. A communiqué from
ALF claimed, “Tennant is merely satisfying his own curiosity about
every minute detail of a specific type of hepatitis found only in woodchucks.”
Tennant told the Ithaca Times that the woodchuck strain of hepatitis
is in the same family as hepatitis B. The experiments on the woodchucks
could lead to “development of improved treatment and prevention [of
hepatitis B] in humans,” Tennant said.

According to |Americans for
Medical Progress| more than 300 million people worldwide
suffer from hepatitis B, with the disease causing one to two million deaths
each year. A drug manufactured by Triangle Pharmaceutical and tested in
Tennant’s lab was able to reduce the level of hepatitis virus in
the woodchuck’s blood by more than 1,000-fold in only seven days.

Sources:

“CU scientist defends use of animals,” Ithaca Journal, July 9, 1998.

“Born Free,” Ithaca Times, July 8, 1998.

“ALF releases woodchucks from Cornell lab,” Americans for Medical
Progress Foundation release, July 6, 1998.

White blood cells restore spinal cords in mice

Israeli researcher Michal Schwartz
of the Weitzmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, recently reported
a new finding that might lead to better treatments for human beings with
|spinal cord| injuries.

In his experiments, Schwartz took
rats whose spinal cords had been severed so their hind legs were paralyzed.
She then treated the rats with their own white blood cells. Many of the
animals who received this treatment experienced a restoration of some
movement in their hind legs. The results of the experiment were reported
in the July issue of Natural Medicine.

Schwartz said there is “a
long way to go to see whether it works in humans,” but her finding is
the latest in a series of recent advances in understanding spinal cord
injuries and one of several recent treatment regimens that have shown
promise in laboratory animals.

In fact, Schwartz believes her discovery
might explain why spinal cord cells, unlike other nerve cells, don’t
usually regenerate after being damaged. In other injuries, macrophages
(white blood cells) would race to the site of the damage to help repair
it. In spinal cord injuries, however, this doesn’t happen.

Source:

“White blood cells regenerate severed spines in rats,” Malcolm Ritter,
Associated Press, June 29, 1998.